Prologue
She hurries from the house, wearing a coat too heavy for the
weather. It is 1941. Another war has begun. She has left a note
for Leonard, and another for Vanessa. She walks purposefully
toward the river, certain of what she'll do, but even now she
is almost distracted by the sight of the downs, the church, and
a scattering of sheep, incandescent, tinged with a faint hint of
sulfur, grazing under a darkening sky. She pauses, watching the
sheep and the sky, then walks on. The voices murmur behind
her; bombers drone in the sky, though she looks for the planes
and can't see them. She walks past one of the farm workers (is
his name John?), a robust, small-headed man wearing a potato-colored
vest, cleaning the ditch that runs through the osier bed.
He looks up at her, nods, looks down again into the brown
water. As she passes him on her way to the river she thinks of
how successful he is, how fortunate, to be cleaning a ditch in
an osier bed. She herself has failed. She is not a writer at all,
really; she is merely a gifted eccentric. Patches of sky shine in
puddles left over from last night's rain. Her shoes sink slightly
into the soft earth. She has failed, and now the voices are back,
muttering indistinctly just beyon ... read full excerpt from: The Hours ebook
